A 37-year-old man has lodged a police case after falling prey to a unique fraud orchestrated by cyber criminals, promising luxury prizes for animal sound identification, leading to Rs89,000 loss in 34 transactions across 20 days.
According to the police, the complainant is a resident of Ambernath. On March 7, he came across a contest-related post on his Facebook account by an unknown person. In the said post animal sounds were given. The complainant identified the sound after which he was informed that he had won the contest and was asked to contact a mobile number to claim his gifts including a gold watch, bag, Apple earbuds and iPhone 14 max.
The scammers then told the complainant that he would have to make some payments to claim the prize and assured him that the said money would be refunded soon. From March 7-27, the complainant in 34 transactions ended up paying Rs89,000 in different bank accounts and UPI IDs provided by the scammer. The fraudster told the complainant that he is sending his gifts and refund money through a delivery boy but kept asking the complainant to pay more money.
Having realised that he had been duped, the man approached the police and got an offence registered in the matter. The police have registered a case under section 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act. The victim has provided details of the mobile numbers used by the scammers and the beneficiary account details to the police.
